Larry Whitaker started playing baseball when he was 5 years old. He was a gifted young player, able to elevate his game enough to make travel teams by the time he was 11. But everything the young man dreamed of nearly fell to pieces on the Fourth of July 2005 when a bottle rocket misfired and hit Whitaker in his left eye. His cornea was scratched, and his iris was shattered. His right eye was also damaged. Suddenly, he was legally blind. Doctors said he would never play baseball again.

Even with spikes every four years for the presidential elections, voter turnout has followed a troubling trajectory in recent decades, rarely exceeding 60 percent even when there's a controversy on the ballot.

A college senior from Michigan will soon spend another winter break without his father, a staff sergeant whose life was taken in a mortar attack in Baqubah, Iraq, on Christmas Day 2003.
Two teen brothers in California will take a moment this holiday season to remember their Marine-pilot stepfather who was killed in an air crash in Pakistan; the oldest boy was only 12 when he tearfully described their late parent as "a hero, especially to me" at the funeral five years ago.
Two students at the University of Illinois, a brother and sister, are about to complete their college degrees and lau

Second Lt. Doug Pringle was stunned when a group of disabled World War II veterans walked into his room at Letterman Army Hospital in San Francisco in November 1968 and invited him to go ski-ing. With one leg severed and the other leg shattered by a North Vietnamese grenade just five months earlier, Pringle quickly refused.
He reconsidered after his buddies came back from their first outing with stories of hanging out in bars with beautiful women.

As the 23rd commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, Adm. Thad Allen has borne the burden of change, most pro-foundly by steering his massive fleet and force out of the Department of Transportation and into new and unwieldy seas in the global war on terrorism under the Department of Homeland Security.
As both Atlantic-area and Maritime Defense Zone Atlantic commander, Allen earned praise by directing the Coast Guard's East Coast response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

The new U.K. prime minister is not likely to share his predecessor's unqualified love of America.
BY ALAN W. DOWD
When Tony Blair took the helm of the United Kingdom in May 1997, he invited President Bill Clinton to address a cabinet meeting in London - a first for a foreign leader. It was an early indication that Blair took what he described as a "special relationship" very seriously.
Ten years and three wars later, Blair is gone. And Gordon Brown is in. It's difficult to imagine Brown ever inviting President Bush to sit in on a cabinet meeting.

What does it mean to be a veteran business owner?
In 1999, the Veterans Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development Act of 1999 – Public Law 106-50 – went into effect, and suddenly there was a whole new meaning to being an entrepreneur who also happened to have served in the U.S. Armed Forces.
Since before World War II and the Korean War, it was considered an honor and a duty to employ and do business with U.S. veterans.